arts
“FROM THE OUTSET, THE CHALLENGES WERE DAUNTING, WITH THE LARGEST BEING HOW TO ADJUST FOR STROBE EXPOSURE WHEN THE SCARAB BEETLE RESTS JUST INCHES FROM THE LIGHT SOURCE, AND YET ITS SIZE IS NO BIGGER THAN A GRAPE.”
STATISTICS:
Process time: 280 hours Individual shots: Approximately 15,000 Enlargement: 333%
Middle School students admiring “The Bug”
Charlie Sitzer, Weston Bell-Geddes ’19, Carson Gilford ’19
TWO STUDENTS’ TWO-YEAR JOURNEY TO BRING AN INSECT TO LIFE THROUGH MICROSCOPY
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s a teacher and an artist, I believe my most successful student projects derive from topics that I would pursue myself. Until the summer of 2017, my interest in
microscopy (the use of microscopes) was tangentially applied to my students’ projects, such as macro-photography (photographing small objects to make them look larger than life-size), but this new project would take me to the heart of it.
THE INSPIRATION
MICROSCULPTURE By Charlie Sitzer, Teacher of Photography in Middle and Upper School
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V I E W P O I N T
M AG A Z I N E
My interest was ignited by the work of British photographer Levon Biss (microsculpture.net), a well-known and respected commercial photographer, who created the term “Microsculpture” to describe the aesthetic of insects the way I imagined them to be – which is to say that I imagined the final photograph to be of human scale, with rich color and glorious detail. I knew that two of my students, now in Photography Honors, would embrace with similar passion a project both aesthetic and biologic: then sophomores Carson Gilford ’19 and Weston Bell-Geddes ’19.
ENTER, “THE BUG” Enter, the eupholus bennitti (blue), a genus of beetle, 3.81cm x 1.7cm (1.5 inches long and .7 inches wide), from Papua New Guinea. To the human eye, the beetle’s exterior appears as a flat blue hue, yet, when lighted, chromatically transforms into a startling array of iridescent scales and textures. The goal for this project would be to produce an image where every hair, fiber, and flaw on the surface of “the bug” would resonate even when enlarged at the scale of a small car. The boys were excited for the challenge, but soon they were beset with initial technical lighting difficulties. Not long after, the boys began exchanging emails with Levon Biss directly, who offered some advice and resource information early on in their photographic journey.
THE PROCESS Weston’s responsibility was lighting, camera, stack-shot rig, uploading and flattening the images. Carson then edited together hundreds of flattened WI NTER /S P R I N G
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